Obligations

Obligatory post New Year cleanup: check!

The three piles of clutter, conveniently labeled “to keep,” “to give away,” “to discard” have been reduced to nothing but a wooden floor that needs to be cleaned.

Obligatory New Year blog post: check!

Now other obligations: grades, activity sheets, application forms, et cetera.

No problemo!

Hello, 2012!

Despite 2011 being a year of few blog posts, life outside the virtual world has never been so exciting. And despite the end of 2011 being tiring, almost exasperating, it was overall a great year.

In the beginning of 2011, a friend gave me a small notebook which she suggested could be used as a gratitude notebook. Daily (for the first few months anyway) I wrote things I was grateful for.

1. A job that makes me jump out of bed each morning
2. Students I love to bits and pieces
3. Kids who make me smile
4. Kids who are not in a hurry to grow up
5. Cool and quiet nights in the mountains
6. Awesome good morning music
7. Great baon
8. Windsurfing weekends
9. Being fit enough to climb Mt. Maculot
10. Being fit enough to climb Mt. Pulag
11. Mountain climbing weekends
12. Impromptu gigs
13. Excitement in anticipation of summer
14. Rainbow cake
15. Cool nights on the beach
16. The perfect travel buddy
17. Stars
18. Coastal road trips–open air and good music
19. Provincial market days
20. Finally graduating, cum laude at that!
21. Surviving my first full year of teaching and loving it
22. Dance
23. Relationships

Here’s to a 2012 of new beginnings.

In the river there is peace

Photo from hedcentrcp.wordpress.com

Someone once told me that the best way to teach a child about peace is to make him hold a live butterfly in the palm of his hand. Something so fragile at the mercy of someone so powerful.

Isn’t that how many conflicts arise–persons using their power to take advantage over others? Humans crushing butterflies. We see it everyday in the form of bullies, negative peer pressure, power tripping, disregard for the poor, and armed conflict where women and children are most vulnerable.

Through the Tungtong River Conservation Project, we continually hold life in the palms of our hands. Butterflies, frogs, bats, birds, flowers, and even the water that flows through the Tungtong River. These are fragile life forms that can either die or thrive in our hands.

I have witnessed many promising things in my visits to Tungtong–children treating tiny creatures with respect, children picking up trash along the riverbank, children treading carefully through the river as not to disturb the life beneath the water surface. I hope that when these children grow up, they treat other human beings with respect. I hope they learn to be responsible for the waste they create. I hope they continue treading through life making a positive difference.

When our children realize that an open palm is much more powerful than a clenched, fighting fist, they have learned a very valuable lesson. We have seen too many fists against fists. We need more open palms that choose peace and allow life to flourish.

Sunday driving

This photo was taking while driving in Antipolo on a Sunday afternoon. Even chickens went for a joyride.

Why I admire Norwegians

The July 22 attacks in Oslo and Utøya have been a shocker to many, including myself. From my visit to Norway and my experiences with Norwegian friends, I know Norwegians to be such peace-loving people–worlds away from the hatred in the manifesto and the actions of the gunman.

I admire the resilience of the Norwegian people. What I admire even more is their refusal to be consumed by hate. Not once have I heard, from TV interviews nor from my Norwegian friends, anyone spread hatred against the perpetrator.

I came across a Norwegian status message on Facebook: Morderen fra Utøya har uttalt i sitt “manifest” at han heller vil hates enn glemmes. Ja, da glemmer vi han, dere. Vi avtaler med hverandre at vi ikke skal si navnet hans, ikke skrive det, ikke google det. Kommer vi over navnet hans på trykk, så hopper vi over det. Så husker vi heller dem som fortjener å bli husket!

Roughly translated: The killer from Utøya has stated in his “manifesto” that he’d rather be hated than forgotten. Yes, we will forget him. We agree with each other that we will not say his name, not write it, nor google it. If we come across his name in print, we skip it. So we will only remember those who deserve to be remembered.

The reactions from Norwegians have been so different from the way many people around the world have reacted to previous acts of terror. We are so used to seeing and hearing hateful responses to hateful actions–a bomb for a bomb, a life for a life. Being reactive and passive aggressive can sometimes be so much easier than being proactive.

We in the Philippines have had our share of hateful actions–the November 2009 Ampatuan massacre, August 2010 bus hostage situation, and the bomb blast in Isabela City last month, to name a few. The world has also had its share of hateful actions. One would think we would know how to proactively respond to such actions by now. Instead, many of us opt to simply express hate against the perpetrators, or worse, choose to take no action at all. Getting educated about the situation and spreading information; talking about the issue among friends, colleagues, or students; signing petitions; even rallying in the streets are more proactive solutions.

Let this be a learning situation. There is a wealth to be learned from the recent events in Norway.

Proof of life

I wanted to be a ballerina or an astronaut.

.

In my imagination, day after day,

I practiced dancing on the moon.

If there was life on Mars, I would waltz with it.

.

Before the accident, I kept a journal.

I drew pictures of outer Life-Forms.

Creatures with sticky tentacles and multiple

eyes–I drew rock monsters, worms with

intelligence, plasma jellies with attitude–

and all of them had rhythm.

They could salsa!

They could tango!

They could do splits!

.

I learned that dancing on Jupiter is a

challenge. Heavy gas, lots of gravity–

good for slow dancing.

But you can’t jitterbug there.

.

Before I was paralyzed,

my body could do almost anything.

.

I learned movements instantly.

My body was a library of dance styles.

On long interplanetary voyages

I imagined leading the crew in the

Charleston,

the minuet, the merengue, the hula, and

the mashed potato.

.

Wars between rival civilizations

in the dark corners of space

would be averted

because my body

would translate between species–

and one-eyed creatures of one world

would read the words

of ten-armed creatures of another world

by following the movements of my hips.

.

My legs would speak of peace.

My torso would convince

skeptical generals of warlike peoples

that love is a greater conqueror than

conquest.

My body would be a peace treaty.

My limbs would be paragraphs on

disarmament. My eyes would be the

signatures

of diverse universal leaders.

.

And my toes would be the footnotes.

Beat the back to school blues

Amid the paper work and the secret semi-panic I’m feeling as the opening of a new school year draws near, I bring you some funnies in the form of school rules.

Disclaimer: These are NOT from the school wherein I am currently employed nor from any school I ever attended.

Truly, I am…

Emotional Idiot
….. by Maggie Estep
.

I’m an Emotional Idiot
so get away from me.
I mean,
COME HERE.

How bed weather can be good for the back

I’m five days into a back injury. I went for treatment on Friday morning, and without even saying where the affected area was, the therapist was able to pinpoint where the pain was coming from just by running her fingers down my back. She said several vertebrae were affected by the trauma and that I had a bump on the affected area. No fracture, just a pinched nerve in the thoracic spine–nothing therapy and prescribed exercise can’t fix.

That’s the second pinched nerve in a span of four months. The first one was in the arch of my left foot, which I got from imbalanced walking because of a strained muscle in the inner thigh. I got the strained thigh muscle and the thoracic pinched nerve from doing similar activities far too foolish to blog about (no gymnastics nor stunts involved).

I had plans of dancing and windsurfing before the end of summer, but I guess the potential of any heavy physical activity for another week is out of the question. I’ve been leaving my computer in school because my back can’t take much weight. At least I can now bend over to pick things up, a big improvement from a few days ago when I couldn’t even reach for my backrest pillow when it fell from my seat, nor reach for my stash of coffee at the top of my work shelf. I’m working on bending over in the shower so I can soap my legs properly.

The body nerve treatment has done wonders and I’m scheduled for another session tomorrow, but I wish my body would heal faster. This inactivity is making me restless and slightly miserable. I’m glad the weather is a bit gloomy as well. That way I won’t feel too sorry for missing out on morning and afternoon walks.

The one week vegan challenge

I decided to eliminate meat from my diet in September 2008. I conveniently defined meat as the flesh of any animal that does not swim. The decision had nothing to do with health reasons. I loved lamb chops and lechon and fried chicken. It was an environmental choice. I had given up using a bunch of plastic and styrofoam products, given up driving a car, and was looking for other ways to lessen my carbon footprint and virtual water consumption. Giving up meat was the next step.

I don’t like being called vegetarian because I am not. Strictly speaking, fish is meat. The cynic in me thinks that pescatarian is a label used by people who want to be vegetarian but just can’t get themselves to give up seafood. Of course there could be health reasons behind that decision, but like I said, I can get cynical. Also, being “vegetarian” begets so many expectations from others, one of which is being an animal lover. Frankly, I can’t stand frogs and cats.

When I first stopped eating meat, I also stopped taking eggs and milk. When eggs and milk were reintroduced into my diet, they tasted a bit odd. The egg started to taste more like poultry and I swear I could almost smell the cow that produced the fresh milk. We hardly have eggs and milk at home, but I take them when I’m out of the house.

Except for a chicken adobo episode and a pork episode when we ran out of food during Ondoy, I’ve been pretty good with my no-meat mission and have been happy with my decision.

However, recent events such as the radiation scare after Japan earthquake and fish kill in Taal Lake have made me question just how healthy and sustainable a diet with fish and seafood really is. It’s hard to tell where your fish came from and under what conditions it was raised. I wish I lived by the sea so I could have as much clean seafood as I pleased. But if I can’t be sure that the fish I’m eating was not part of an overfishing expedition, was not fished by international companies killing the livelihood of local fishermen, or was not living in contaminated waters, I’d rather not eat fish at all.

For all the environmental, social, political, and health reasons stated and unstated, I choose to give veganism a chance. If it works (and if I don’t miss dairy-based desserts that much), I just might go full out with being vegan. Or if it doesn’t work, strike a balance somewhere in between no meat and vegan.

Today is Day 1.